Consumers often wish to purchase a product or service in a way that is convenient for them based on their location, the time of day, the type of product or service, etc. Similarly, providers of products or services want to enable consumers to purchase the products or services in the most cost effective way for the providers, while making the products or services available to the greatest number of potential purchasers.
For example, an operator of a transit system may need to purchase and install ticket vending machines at transit locations in order to make transit tickets and passes available to consumers. These machines and the associate proprietary ticket distribution network are typically both expensive and limited in terms of the number of available purchase sites. A similar situation may exist for providers of tickets to other venues, such as concerts, sporting events, etc. In addition, sellers of certain goods may be limited (in terms of the number of units they can provide to consumers) by a limited sales channel since consumers may have to visit one site (or one of a small number of sites) in order to purchase the goods, and similarly may only be able to retrieve the goods from a small number of locations.
Therefore, as recognized by the inventor, it would be desirable to have a system whereby a consumer can pay for a product or service at a convenient location and then access that product or service at another location. This would permit a consumer to pay for a third party product or service at a merchant and then visit that third party to obtain the product or service (such as access to a venue or pick up of a product). Embodiments of the invention address these problems and other problems individually and collectively.